* * * *
At dusk they returned to the Chief Forester’s house for dinner.
“I must apologize to you for the food,” said he. “We are on slightly curtailed supplies, due to our population having grown faster than our new plantings. Oh, you will have a good meal—I do not mean to starve you, —but merely that you will be expected not to ask for a second service of anything and excuse the absence of luxuries from my table.” His great body dropped into an upholstered chair.
“Is there no way to arrange things except by rationing yourselves while you wait for the new forests to bear crops?”
The Forester laughed a trifle bitterly. “Of course—but at a price. We could easily fell some trees for mushroom growing (they grow on dead logs) and also we could cut into the crop of edible pith-trees a little before maturity—and so all along the line. It would set us back in our plans a few years at the most, but there is no use talking about it. The Council of Youth has claimed the Rights of its Generation. The future is theirs, of course, and they object to our spending any of their resources now. We older people are a little more liberal in our views—not selfishly, but on a principle of common-sense. There have been some bitter words, I’m afraid, and the matter is by no means settled yet—for their attitude is almost fanatical and lacks all reason. But there is no need to bother you with our local affairs,” and he turned the conversation into other channels.
He was forever using the expression “thanks to our ancestors,” a point which Winters noted with surprise. So far one thing had eluded Winters completely: that was the history of the past ages during which all these drastic changes had come about. When the time came that he was bade tell his story, at the conclusion of the meal, he thought a moment as to how he might best obtain this information.
“I have travelled far,” he said, “but in time—not in distance.”
The Forester held a forkful of food poised in the air, eyebrows raised.
“What nonsense is this?” he demanded.
“No nonsense . . . your mushrooms are delicious ... I have succeeded in controlling the duration of a state of suspended animation. I went to sleep many years ago; woke up this morning.”
The Forester was incredulous.
“How long do you pretend to have slept?”
“I don’t know for sure,” replied Winters. “My instruments showed a certain figure, but to be at all certain I should prefer that you tell me the history of the world. No need of anything but the rough outlines.”
“Ha, ha! You promised me a story and you are most ingenious in fulfilling your promise, stranger!”
“I am, on the contrary, absolutely serious!”
“I cannot believe it—but it may be an amusing game. Let me see . . . Last year the first breadfruit trees bore in the lower temperate zones of the earth (that is a piece of it in your plate). It has greatly changed our mode of life and it may soon be unnecessary to grind chestnut flour for baking.”
“Interesting,” replied Winters. “But go back a thousand years more.”
The Forester’s eyes opened wide. Then he laughed delightedly. “Good! It is no lowly boaster, eh! A thousand years . . . That would be about the time of the great aluminum process. As you know, prior to that time the world was badly in need of metals. When Koenig perfected his method for producing aluminum from clay the economics of the world was turned topsy-turvy and . . . what! Farther back than a thousand years!”
“I think you might try two thousand.”
* * * *
The Forester exploded with laughter and then sobered at a sudden thought. He glanced shrewdly at his companion a moment, and a slight coldness appeared in his eyes.
“You are not by any slightest chance serious?” he asked.
“I am.”
“It is absurd! In those days the human body still had an appendix—that was just after the Great Revolution when the Wasters were finally overthrown and True Economics lifted her torch to guide the world on its upward path. Two thousand years ago! Thence dates all civilized history! Such archaic customs as organized superstitions, money and ownership by private people of land and a division of humanity into groups speaking different languages—all ended at that time. That was a stirring period!”
“Well then, go back another five hundred years.”
“The height of the false civilization of Waste! Fossil plants were ruthlessly burned in furnaces to provide heat, petroleum was consumed by the million barrels, cheap metal cars were built and thrown away to rust after a few years’ use, men crowded into ill-ventilated villages of a million inhabitants—some historians say several million. That was the age of race-fights where whole countrysides raised mobs and gave them explosives and poisons and sent them to destroy other mobs. Do you pretend to come from that shameful scene?”
“That is precisely the sort of thing we used to do,” replied Winters, “although we did not call it by the same set of names.” He could barely repress his elation. There could no longer be the slightest doubt of it—he was alive in the year 5000! His clock had been accurate!
The Forester’s face was growing red. “Timberfall! You have been amusing long enough—now tell me the truth: Where is your orig?”
“I don’t understand. I have told you the truth.”
“Stupid nonsense, I tell you! What can you possibly hope to gain from telling such a story? Even if people were such fools as to believe you, you could hardly expect to be very popular!”
“Why,” said Winters in surprise, “I thought you were so thankful for all your ancestors had done for you? I am one of your ancestors!”
The Forester stared in astonishment. “You act well,” he remarked drily. “But you are, I am sure, perfectly aware that those ancestors whom we thank were the planners for our forests and the very enemies of Waste. But for what should we thank the humans of three thousand years ago? For exhausting the coal supplies of the world? For leaving us no petroleum for our chemical factories? For destroying the forests on whole mountain ranges and letting the soil erode into the valleys? Shall we thank them, perhaps, for the Sahara or the Gobi deserts?”
“But the Sahara and the Gobi were deserts five thousand years before my time.”
“I do not know what you mean by ‘your’ time. But if so, all the more reason you should have learned a lesson from such deserts. But come! You have made me angry with your nonsense. I must have some pleasant sort of revenge! Do you still claim to be a living human from the Age of Waste?”
Winters’ caution bade him be silent. The Forester laughed mischievously: “Never mind! You have already claimed to be that! Well then, the matter is readily proved. You would in that case have an appendix and . . . yes . . . hair on your chest! These two characteristics have not appeared in the last two thousand years. You will be examined and, should you prove to have lied to me, a fitting punishment will be devised! I shall try to think of a reward as amusing as your wild lies have proved.”
His eyes twinkled as he pressed a button hidden in his chair arm and a minute later two young men entered. Winters was in no physical condition to resist and was soon stripped of his clothing. He was not particularly hairy of chest, as men of his age went, but hair there was unquestionably and the Forester stepped forward with an incredulous exclamation. Then he hurriedly seized the discarded clothing and felt the material carefully —examining the linen closely in the light of the electric lamp concealed in the wall.
“To the health room with him!” he cried.
Poor Winters was carried helplessly down a corridor and into a room lined with smooth white glass and set about with apparatus of an evident surgical nature. The place was odiferous with germicide. He was held against a black screen and the Forester snapped on an X-ray tube and peered at his nude body through a mask of bluish glass. After a minute he left the room and returned again almost instantly with a book in his hands. He opened to a page of photographs and studied them carefully, once more peering at Winters through the mask
. Finally he grunted in stupefaction and with close-pressed lips and puzzled eyes turned to the two attendants.
“He has an appendix—there can be no doubt of it! This is the most amazing thing I have ever imagined! The stranger you see before you claims to have survived from the ancient days—from the age of waste! And he has an appendix, young comrades! I must talk to the biologists all over the country—the historians as well! The whole world will be interested. Take him along with you and see that he is provided with walling for the night.”
He turned to the door and Winters heard him in the next room talking excitedly over the radio-telephone. The two young attendants led him along the hall and as he passed he could observe that the Forester was speaking to a fat red-headed, red-faced man, whose features showed in the televisor—and who evidently was proving difficult to convince. Winters stared a minute for this was the first man he had seen whose face was anything except swarthy and slender.
Winters was led down the hall and permitted to resume his clothing. He was in an exalted mood. So his arrival in this new world was creating a stir after all! In the morning the airwheel would perhaps bring dozens of scientists to examine into his case. He was beginning to feel weak and fatigued after his exciting day, but this latest thrill gave a last flip to his nerves and gave him strength just long enough to prove his own undoing.
One of the attendants hurried out of sight as they left the house. The other guided him along the edge of the village.
“We young members of the village have a gathering tonight, sir. It is called the Council of Youth and at it we discuss matters of importance to our generation. Would it be too much to ask that you address our meeting and tell us something of your experiences?”
His vanity was stirred and he weakly agreed, tired and sleepy though he was. The meeting place was just a little distance away, explained his guide.
In the meantime the youth who had hastened on ahead had entered a small room off the assembly hall. The room contained only three persons and they looked up as the newcomer entered.
“It is as we thought, comrades, the Oldsters have brought him here for some purpose of their own. He pretends to have slept for three thousand years and to be a human relic of the Age of Waste!”
The others laughed. “What will they try on us next?” drawled one lazily.
“Stronghold is bringing him here,” continued the latest arrival, “and will persuade him to speak to us in the meeting, if he can. You understand the intent?”
There was a wise nodding of heads. “Does he know the law of the Council?”
“Probably, but even so it is worth the attempt—you know I’m not certain myself but that he may be from the old days—at least he is a startling good imitation. The man has hair on his body!”
There was a chorus of shocked disbelief, finally silenced by a sober and emphatic assurance. Then a moment of silence.
“Comrades, it is some trick of the Oldsters, depend upon it! Let the man speak to the Council. If he makes a slip, even a slight one, we may be able to work on the meeting and arouse it to a sense of our danger. Any means is fair if we can only prevent our inheritance being spent! I hear that the order to fell the half-matured pith-trees will go out tomorrow unless we can stop it. We must see what we can do tonight—make every effort.”
* * * *
When Winters arrived at the hall the three young men stood on the platform to welcome him. The room was low-raftered and about fifty feet square. It was filled with swarthy young men and women. The thing that most impressed Winters was the luxury of the seating arrangements. Each person sat in a roomy upholstered arm-chair! He thought of the contrast that a similar meeting-hall in his own times would have afforded—with its small stiff seats uncomfortably crowded together and its stuffy hot atmosphere.
The lighting was by electricity concealed in the walls and gave at the moment a rosy tint to the room, though this color changed continually to others—now red or purple or blue—and was strangely soothing. There was a lull in the general conversation. One of the young leaders stepped forward.
“Comrades! This stranger is of another generation than ours. He is come especially to tell us of conditions in the ancient days—he speaks from personal experience of the Age of Waste, comrades, from which times he has survived in artificial sleep! The Forester of our orig, who is old enough to know the truth, has so informed us!” Winters missed the sarcasm. He was tired now and regretting that he had consented to come.
There was a stir of astonishment in the audience and a low growling laughter which should have been a warning, but Winters, full of fatigue, was thinking only of what he should say to these young people. He cleared his throat.
“I am not sure that I have anything to say that would interest you: Historians or doctors would make me a better audience. Still, you might wish to know how the changes of three thousand years impress me. Your life is an altogether simpler thing than in my day. Men starved then for lack of food and youth had no assurance of even a bare living—but had to fight for it.” (Here there were a few angry cheers, much to Winters’ puzzlement.) “This comfortable assurance that you will never lack food or clothing is, to my mind, the most striking change the years have brought.”
He paused a moment uncertainly and one of the young leaders asked him something about “if we were perhaps trying to accomplish this assurance too quickly.”
“I am not sure that I know what you mean. Your Chief Forester mentioned something today of a question of economics. I am not familiar with the facts. However, I understand you have a very poor opinion of my own times, due to its possibly unwise consumption of natural resources. We had even then men who warned us against our course of action, but we acted upon the belief that when oil and coal were gone mankind would produce some new fuel to take their place. I observe that in this we were correct, for you now use wood alcohol—an excellent substitute.”
A young man leaped to his feet excitedly. “For that reason, comrades,” he said in a loud voice, “this stranger of course believes his age was justified in using up all the oil and fuel in the world!”
There was a slow growling which ended in a few full-throated cries and an uneasy stirring about in the audience. Winters was growing dazed with his need for rest and could not understand what was going on here.
“What you say interests us very much,” said another of the men on the platform beside him. “Was it very common to burn coal for its mere heat?”
“Yes. It burned in every man’s house—in my house as well.”
There was an ugly moving about in audience, as though the audience was being transformed into a mob. The mob, like some slow lumbering beast, was becoming finally aroused by these continual pin-pricks from the sharp tongues of its leaders.
“And did you also use petroleum for fuel?”
“Of course. We all used it in our automobiles.”
“And was it usual to cut down trees just for the sake of having the ground clear of them?”
“Well . . . yes. On my own land I planted trees, but I must say I had a large stretch of open lawn as well.”
Here Winters felt faint and giddy. He spoke quietly to the young man who had brought him. “I must lie down, I’m afraid. I feel ill.”
“Just one more question will be all,” was the whispered reply. Then aloud: “Do you think we of the Youth Council should permit our inheritance to be used up—even in part—for the sake of present comfort?”
“If it is not done to excess I can see nothing wrong in principle—you can always plant more trees . . . but I must say good night for I am. . . .”
* * * *
CHAPTER IV
Revolt of the Youth
He never finished his sentence. A very fury of sound arose from the hall of the Council. One of the leaders shouted for silence.
“You have heard, comrades! You observe what sort of man has been sent to address us! We of Youth have a lesson to learn from the Age of Waste, it appears! At
least the Oldsters think so! The crisis that has arisen is a small matter, but if we should once give in when will the thing stop? What must they think of our intelligence if they expect us to believe this three thousand-year sleep story? To send him here was sheer effrontery! And to send him here with that piece of advice passes beyond all bounds of toleration. Timberfall! There can be only one answer.” (here he turned to glare at poor dazed Winters, stupefied by the effect of his long emaciation). “We must make such an example of this person as shall forever stamp our principles deep in the minds of the whole world!”
There were loud shouts and several young people rushed up on the platform and seized Winters.
Before The Golden Age - A SF Anthology of the 1930s Page 49